(S2) Episode 2: A Man and his Box
by J. David Reed
Summary: After the events in the Cave, the Doctor is left to pick up the mess - an angry crowd, a lone TARDIS and a ghostly figure somewhere off in the cosmos. Struggling to keep everything under control, the Doctor must uncover the mystery of Gug, and the terrible secret that little moon holds. Cont. from Episode 1.
1. Chapter 1: A Desert Storm

Lifting his head from the dirt, the Doctor felt the heat burning his back against the orange felt ground. This stupid moon was bloody hot and he was sick of it already.

His steadied himself up on his elbows, looking around at all of the people he could see on the desert ground, moaning in the heat as they woke up.

Simuss stirred, looking back up at the Doctor and looking around himself. They arose together, seeing the plain of bodies, shifting as their brains attempted to figure out the memories, as their bodies shape back into their original species. Time Lord to Human.

Simuss ran to the nearest person as they struggled up - it was a young woman, maybe in her late teens - and helped her to her feet. The Doctor did the same for an old man to his left, then a young man a little further out. Soon enough they were helping each other up, and the Doctor quickly realised that they were looking to him for information. He didn't know why, and he presumed that they didn't either. People, in times of trouble, just seem to look to the person they think might know something - out of trust or suspicion. He hoped it was trust.

There was maybe fifty of them. More than he had expected, and after a while they were all staring at him. The funny man in the bow tie with floppy hair. Everyone else was wearing some kind of gear, be it a cave-diving jumpsuit, a sliver over-all with navy blue or a slightly confusing fishnet-esque body-covering suit.

Sure enough, they were all human, and he had them in a large circle in a few minutes, with the Doctor standing on a small rock just to show his status of knowing possibly a little more than the rest of them.

'Hello humans!' he said, slapping a smile upon his own face. 'Do we know where we are?'

'Is this Gug?' said a man, maybe in his forties with a large beard that masked most of his face.

'It is!' The Doctor pointed and smiled. 'Gug, a little desert moon with, anyone?'

'A cave system that was a scientific mystery,' said a woman in her sixties. 'I'm guessing we're all explorers. What happened?'

'I can tell you,' the Doctor said with some reservations in his voice. 'But you'll have to bear with me. It gets a little complicated.'

'There was a box,' Simuss said, solidifying the Doctor's hope that he would have kept his memories. 'A box with something inside.'

'As do most boxes,' the teenage girl smirked.

'It was a box that I couldn't recognise,' the Doctor said. 'Which is odd. I'm a traveller. I've seen a lot of boxes, but this one was different. Untraceable, and locked within it was something that changed all of you.'

'Changed us into what?' came a voice.'

'Why are we listening to this?' came another.

'This guy's a nutter, look at his shoes!'

'What's wrong with my shoes?' the Doctor muttered. He quickly shook his head, snapping out of it. 'Look, you were changed, your memories were wiped and then I fixed it, but to fix it and save you and your memories, I had to open the box. Releasing whatever was inside.'

'Where the hell are the caves?' asked a woman. She looked outwards, into the desert - it was almost flat. Nought but sand and rock.

'They left with the monster,' Simuss said. 'It wasn't really a cave, it was a ship. A spaceship, called a TARDIS.'

'A spaceship disguised as a cave?' asked a random crowdling.

'A spaceship disguised as a cave,' the Doctor repeated. He smiled. 'The thing in the box used it to draw you in, transform you, store your memories in the box so that I had to let it out to let them out and save you, returning you to Humanity.'

'So... you let it out?' asked someone.

'To save you. Don't get me started, I know, it's all 'was that the right choice' or 'pros versus cons'. I know.'

'So what the hell are you going to do about it?' asked the teenage girl.

'Well, I'm going to take you all home,' he said. 'Then me and Simuss, if he's willing, will travel to the 21st century to pick up a friend of mine, Clara. Then, we're going to track the green figure all across the Universe.'

'I thought you said the box was untraceable?' Simuss whispered, seemingly agreeing to the proposal.

'We're not tracking the box,' the Doctor smiled. 'We're tracking the TARDIS.' He straightened up and addressed the group of Humans. 'My ship, my own TARDIS is back in the town, over there,' he said, pointing to a barely visible group of buildings off in the distance. 'It can go anywhere, anywhen. I'll take you all home. You can set down, have a cuppa, go back to your lives.'

'But what do we say, to our families?' a man asked. 'I've been in that cave for weeks. What do I say to my family? They were waiting for me in the town, would they still be here?'

'I don't know,' the Doctor said. 'I guess we'll find out. You direct us then, sir.'

'My name is Harper,' he said, his voice gruff but worried. 'You say the town is that way?'

'It is!' The Doctor watched Harper walk past his little bolder and hopped off, following him to the town.

Harper lead the groups of humans, along with the Doctor, towards Gug's tourist town. Gus, the sun, hung high in the sky - it was nowhere hear morning nor night. The town's shadow was short and sharp, and as the group of fifty stepped into the shade they felt the temperature drop. It didn't feel completely natural, that kind of drop in temperature. The Doctor had experienced it before, many times; when a planet or moon is exposed on one side to the sun more than the other, it starts to scorch the surface. Now the dirt of Gug was starting to burn. That wasn't right...

'What's this?' Harper yelled as he disappeared into a building. 'Everyone's gone!'

'Where is everyone?' came a voice.

Soon the whole lot of them burst into an outrage, a howling mass of panicking humans. Great.

'Everyone-' the Doctor was completely ignored.

'People, will you-' Simuss tried, but he was yelled at by someone who shut him up completely.

Soon the sounds of people blaming eachother broke out. FIghting and rowing, all vocal. Then there was a fist. A slap.

Then they all stopped blaming eachother, and they looked to the man in the funny bowtie.

'Who the hell are you?', 'Why do you know so much?', 'How come he gets all the answers?'

'Okay, everyone-' he tried, but they yelled and howled, not letting him speak. 'Everyone, please. Oh for the love of- EVERYONE, SHUT UP!'

The crowd fell silent.

'Thank you. Now. The plan...'

The Doctor started thinking. This was going to have to be good.


	2. Chapter 2: Back in the Game

Fifty of them, all staring up at him. One hundred watchful, impatient eyes. A couple of mutters.

He swallowed.

'The plan,' he said, 'is for me to go and collect my friend. She's very good, and she'll be able to help me help you.'

'Why, can't you do it?' asked someone.

'Not on my own. Don't function well on my own. I tend to get... thoughtful.'

'Thoughtful?' asked Harper. 'My family is gone and you're worried about getting too thoughtful?'

'You haven't seen my thoughts,' the Doctor said. Moving on. 'Now, once we're back, you're going to take me, my friend Clara and Simuss around this town and show us the last place you saw your families, friends, anyone you came with. People are disappearing. We need to find them, okay?'

'I should have thought so!' Harper yelled, getting aggressive. Humans. So sentimental. How wonderful it must feel to just expect people to be around like that.

'Right then,' the Doctor said. 'I'll be back soon.'

'You hold on there!' someone yelled. It was a woman, in her thirties, with a thin face and intrusive eyes. 'We don't know if you're coming back. I saw someone should go with you, make sure you come back and help us.'

'Trust me,' the Doctor said. 'I'm the Doctor.'

'I don't give half a damn whether you're a nurse or a vet or a bloody paleontologist,' she snarked, 'someone is going with you. Harper?'

'I'll go with the man,' Harper said, stepping forward.

'Okay, awesome!' the Doctor said. Harper scowled. 'Simuss, you stay here and keep everyone comfortable. I shouldn't be long!'

Simuss sighed and turned to the crowd. They watched him with eagle eyes that made the Doctor feel almost sorry for leaving him. Almost, because he knew he would be back soon, and he'd have to deal with them.

'Is this the sort of situation you usually find yourself in... what was your name?'

'I'm the Doctor, and yes, it is actually. This is what I do. Track down strange mysteries, solve them, save people.'

'With help.'

'Usually. Lately, I'll be honest, it's been a lot of people going missing. I figured that they were all in the caves, but it seems there's a new dimension to this mystery. Heh.' He laughed at his little 'dimension' joke, fully knowing that no-one would either get it nor care. That made him sad.

'So you though my family had followed me into the cave?' Harper asked as he and the Doctor moved through the town towards his own, lovely TARDIS. 'Why would they?'

'If they went looking for you. Or they were told to...' he started to think. Could this be to do with the green figure?

'Told to?' he asked. 'What would tell them to, your box-ghost.'

'Possibly,' he said. 'Although it doesn't make that much sense. Not yet, anyway.'

'Yet?'

'Well, this is mystery, Harper. New things reveal themselves around every corner. Every turn is a new clue. A new discovery.'

'You do this too much,' Harper said. 'You're starting to enjoy it.'

'I get told that a lot,' the Doctor admitted.

'Then why still do it? Why do you still help people if you know it's just going to twist you to the point where you enjoy it, even.'

'Because I, occasionally, manage to make a difference. For good.'

'Do you intend to do good this time?'

'I thought is was going good, yeah,' he said, smiling as they reached the TARDIS. 'Here we are!'

Harper looked unimpressed.

'It's a box,' he said. 'It's not even a pretty box.'

'I think she's sexy,' the Doctor muttered. He realised what he'd said, his eye widening, but to his mercy Harper didn't respond.

The Doctor moved on, unlocking the door. 'Anyway, have a look inside. Much more impressive, I think you'll find.'

Harper sniffed and pushed the door inwards, and smirked. 'It says pull to open,' he said. The Doctor grimaced.

Harper stepped inside and the Doctor heard him take a breath, and he looked around. 'It's...'

'Bigger?'

'A different place...' said Harper, thinking. He was pulling it apart, in his head, breaking it down. 'New dimension. I'm guessing the door is a dimensional transference device?'

'Something along those lines,' the Doctor said. 'Right then. To Earth!'

'Earth?' Harper asked, looking confused. 'What are you talking about? That place has burned!'

'Time Machine,' the Doctor said, winking. 'Handy as hell. I'll go and pick up Clara, we'll only be gone a few seconds to Gug, but for us it could be minutes.' He started dancing around the console, flicking switches and hitting buttons. 'Off we pop!'

'I don't think I like this,' Harper said just before he was flung off his feet by the TARDIS' momentum.

'No one does!' the Doctor yelled, laughing maniacally as they span towards Earth - 2013.

They landed suddenly and painfully (for Harper, at least) in Clara's front garden. The Doctor left Harper to recuperate and, by the time he was off the grey floor, the Doctor was back inside with a girl who looked like she'd been waiting for this for too long.

'Harper, Clara, Clara, Harper,' the Doctor said, smiling. 'Now then, we have to find out what's happening with this green figure.'

'Okay, so, green ghost thing inside a TARDIS, caves that aren't caves and people going missing?' Clara asked.

The Doctor nodded. 'To sum it up, yeah. You back in, or do you need more time?'

'I wouldn't have let you bring me out if is wasn't,' she smiled.

The Doctor gave her a grin as she readied herself. Harper cut out the middleman and lay back down, closing his eyes. He hated flying anyway. This was hell.

Clara threw her head back, loving it. She'd missed this. She knew it was needed, her break from it all. She'd watched a version of herself be shot and killed, and her lover walk her into the edge of reality itself, so she was due a holiday.

But this felt so right, being back in the TARDIS.

On a job, working a mystery.

Back in the game.


	3. Chapter 3: Hey-Ho!

They landed just as harshly as they had set off, and the Doctor lead Clara out, helping Harper of the floor and out the door.

Out the doors, Clara was greeted to a loud, unhappy group of people in very tatty clothing with dust on their faces. And a crying boy.

As they appeared from the box, the crying boy latched himself to the Doctor.

'They've gone mad!' he cried.

'Yes!' one of the crowd yelled. 'We bloody well have! My family's gone missing, my child is gone and you swan off in your box to collect your friend?!'

'Well,' the Doctor nodded. 'I did take Harper. He watched. Didn't deviate for a second.'

'What's all this?' Clara asked, pointing at the crying boy.

'Oh, this is Simuss,' he said, patting him. 'That's the angry mob, Harper's behind you and everyone else is missing. Hey-ho!'

Clara mouthed 'hey-ho', trying to work out whether he had genuinely thought it was a good idea.

She rolled her eyes as the Doctor walked out, into the now silent group. Fifty of them, falling silent in front of them. He smiled.

'Well, any ideas?' he asked.

They blinked.

'What are you doing?' Clara asked him, quietly.

'Asking them. They're right, I know things they don't, but I've told them everything about this that I do. They know what I know. So. Any ideas? Where do you think your wife is, Harper?'

'I don't know, you're supposed to tell me!'

'Am I? I thought I was just a funny man in a bow tie, right?'

'Maybe you are, but my family is missing and you're all we have.'

'So? Tell me. What are your thoughts?'

Harper fell silent, thinking. 'You said that the green... thing. In the cave. It changed us to a different species. Why?'

'To hold you ransom,' Simuss said. 'So it could get out.'

'What if it took more than it needed?' Harper asked. 'Would it take my family? Is there any other reason someone would want... what was it called?'

'Time Lord,' the Doctor said. 'And that's what I was thinking. Very good Harper. This is no longer a exploration, Simuss, it's a rescue mission.'

'So... we need to find the green figure.'

'Which means tracking it's TARDIS. Like I said. Just saying. Called it.'

'Right, off your high-horse you,' Clara said. 'You called me in, what do you need?'

'Yes, right. Clara. I need you to help these lovely people.'

'...and?'

'That's it,' he nodded. 'I'm going to have to chase down this TARDIS-wielding rogue, I need someone to look after them.'

'...You're kidding me.'

'Of course I am, you're sticking with me.'

She gave him a look. It was a fun look, with a hint of frustration. She'd missed this.

'Now then,' the Doctor said. 'I'm going to leave now. I'm not your boss, you can do whatever you want, but if you go home your families will turn up there. If you stay here, I'll bring them back here.'

'How do you expect us to go anywhere?' Harper asked, looking around at the scorched town.

'Well... I guess you'll just have to stay then,' the Doctor said. 'And wait.'

'Wait?!' Harper yelled.

The Doctor took a breath. 'Harper, look. I have been doing this just about all of my adult life. I'm over a thousand years old. I have a few centuries of experience behind me. I'm clever and good and reliable and I would never let a creature like this take people. Simple take them. It's madness! and you don't trust me because you're scared and human and that's fine, it really is. But I have to ask - if I told you that there was literally no one better suited to finding everybody who's gone missing in this town than me, would you trust them in my hands?'

'Well,' Harper said. 'It seems to me that they're not in your hands, are they?'

'They will be. And I'll be back,' he said as he and Clara stepped away, back towards the TARDIS. 'Simuss, you coming?'

Simuss hopped after them, giving a curious look back at the crowd.

'Are they going to be okay?'

'No idea,' the Doctor said. 'They were annoying me.'

'You really do have a huge ego, don't you?' Clara smiled.

The Doctor replied with a smile, and then started flicking controls. 'Best thing we can do is try and chase down that TARDIS. Where ever it's gone, it's likely that the people who've gone missing are there, too.'

'Do we know that for certain?' Simuss asked, holding a rail, nervous.

'Not for certain, but it's all we have at the minute. We can maybe find it's next landing place, if we're lucky...'

'How do we know where to start?' Clara asked. 'There is pretty much infinite space and time, it could have gone anywhere.'

'If you had all of time and space to explore, and you'd been locked in a cave for God-knows how long, where would you go?'

Clara though for a second, before smiling quietly. 'Home.'

'Exactly!' He stopped. 'Except, we don't know where it's home is.'

'So... how does that help us?'

'We know it would have gone straight there, in a line. Easy to find. One long, streak of old Artron energy from the TARDIS that doesn't match this one. I'll start scanning now,' he smiled as he bounced a button. 'Shouldn't take too long.'

'Any theories?' Simuss asked.

'What if it's someone you already know?' Clara asked. 'Like, a Time lord.'

'Couldn't be, Time War and everything.'

'But you said that the dimension change inside the TARDIS was the reason you couldn't sense me being a Time Lord, what if it did it for the green thing?' Simuss chimed.

'Well-'

'Or it could be a TARDIS itself,' Clara offered. 'They seem to be fairly temperamental, plus one has been 'humanised' before, right?'

The TARDIS gave a hum, almost in agreement.

'That's a good-'

'Or it could be a monster, good and simple,' Simuss suggested.

'Where do monsters live?' Clara asked.

'In the dark?'

'Are we helping?'

'I don't think so.'

'Look,' the Doctor interrupted, eyes closed and breathing deeply. 'We know where it's gone.'

They stared at him, waiting to know.

He smiled. 'It's gone home.'


	4. Chapter 4: Leaky

'Home?' Clara and Simuss both asked, equally dumbfounded expressions on their faces.

'Home! Don't you see?!' The Doctor looked at them, expecting a response. When they didn't give any, he didn't sag, as Clara had been expecting. Instead, his face lit up and he brightened, relishing the chance to explain himself. 'We're inside a TARDIS!' he said, grinning.

They paused.

Eventually Clara said, 'We know.'

The Doctor looked up, at the console of his own TARDIS and shook his head. 'Not this one. A big one. Bigger on the inside.'

Clara's eyes shifted. 'We're inside a TARDIS, inside a TARDIS?'

'We are. A TARDIS that dematerialised, massively expanded, and then rematerialised, swallowing Gug!'

'So... where's home?' Simuss asked.

'It's wherever the big TARDIS is headed. It did it again... inside a TARDIS, the person at the console has a lot of control over what goes on inside. Whatever it was inside that box, it used the TARDIS to swallow this moon. It's holding Gug ransom!'

'Ransom? So, we've been capture again,' Simuss deduced, deflating.

'No, no no. We can get out. We'll have a little trouble, but I have a lever I installed incase of this. Of course, last time it was my own TARDIS getting trapped inside itself, but that doesn't matter. We can get out, in this. Alternatively, we try to get the mouth of the TARDIS to open up so we can squeeze Gug out along with it's inhabitants, but that might be tricky.'

'Wait- mouth?' Clara asked, getting seriously confused.

'Mouth, door, whatever you want to call it. We'd have to program it to be huge, let out the whole moon.'

'How do you know all of this?' Simuss asked.

'The readings,' the Doctor pointed. 'They're telling me the TARDIS that green thing stole is all around us. Everywhere. And that's because it is.'

'We're in a pocket universe,' Clara said, nodding.

'Of sorts. More of a big box, really. Now, onto saving those lost tourists of Gug.' The Doctor hit a few buttons and pressed a few buttons, grinning. 'If we're going to have any chance figuring out what this thing is, or what it wants, then we'd better start by getting out of this room.'

'This... room? What? I'm lost. Sorry.' Clara bit her lip.

'This room, where the TARDIS is holding Gug. It's a simulation, the space around it, keeping it suspended. We need to get out.'

'Can we?'

'Absolutely, we just need to find out how big the room is. Tricky thing with TARDIS technology - they get pretty big pretty fast. If you leave a TARDIS in the same place, once it gets damaged, it'll start to leak. It'll grow. But only if it's damaged, usually it just sits there...'

'What?' Simuss stopped him, thinking.

'...What?'

'Leak?'

'Yeah, like...' he demonstrated with his hands, trying to make a box and then blow it up, until it encase him. 'You know, growing!'

'Leaking?'

'Yeah, the bigger-on-the-inside, it leaks outwards after damage to the system. It's fairly rare, but there you go.'

'So that's what's happened here.'

'Not necessarily, but if it is, we need to know how big it's gotten and how fast it's growing and if we can move faster to get out.'

'If not?'

'Then we find the exit, stroll into the console room. Let out Gug. Shrink the TARDIS down.'

'What about the green guy?' Clara asked.

'That's the antagonist, I suppose. And what does that imply? Come one, English, first day of class, Protagonists and Antagonists, what's the main thing?'

They were stumped.

'Change!' The Doctor beamed at them. 'They change! An Antagonist in the tale thinks it's the Protagonist of it's own story, and every Protagonist worth it's weight changes through the story.'

'I don't know where you're going with this,' Simuss stated, honestly dumbfounded.

'I don't have to go anywhere. We have to change the green figure, make it less... evil.'

'How do we do that though?' Clara asked.

'We show it what it's doing. Hopefully we can appeal to the good in it.'

'And if not? What if it just wants to kill everyone on this moon, and taking it hostage was just an easy option?'

'Then we do the dirty work ourselves,' the Doctor said with a nod, swallowing his morality. He did a lot of that.

'Dirty work?'

'I'm not suggesting killing it, but maybe trapping it? Talking to it? I don't know. We'll see.'

The Doctor smiled as he started pressing buttons again, calculating the distance the room that they were trapped within seemed to have between walls.

'Good news,' he said. 'We're in a still room. No expansion, so it'll be easy to get out of once we find the exit.'

'I feel like that's going to be the bad news.'

'Yeah. I can't find the exit.'

'Nothing?'

'Well, there are a few odd readings coming from Gug, but I'm not sure what they are... nothing to do with this. I'll look into it later.'

'Nothing to do with it?' Clara asked. 'Are we really in a place to ignore a coincidence?'

'Oh, I doubt it's a coincidence, young padawan. I just feel like we need,' he smashed the console, smiling, 'a little perspective on things. We need out.'

Simuss nodded, Clara looked unnerved, the Doctor smiled.

'You're worrying me,' Clara said.

'I think I'm worrying myself. We're here!'

'...What?'

'Here! Console room of a mini-galaxy-sized TARDIS. Wonder what it's going to look like.'

'It was like a cave earlier,' Simuss said. 'Will it still be that?'

Clara opened the door to a white-crystal, , almost liquid room. The curves and angles of the central console slid into the floor, forming a sphere of glass in the centre that stretched up to a high ceiling that curved in such a way that it was difficult to tell how high it was exactly. It seemed to go on forever.

'That's not a cave,' Clara noticed.


	5. Chapter 5: A New Breed

Clara's foot sounded like the ticking of a clock upon the glass-like floor. Lights and shimmers looked up at them, blank against the white and shining pillar that dances in the middle, completely still.

'No, that's not a cave,' the Doctor said, with a smile. 'It's the console room.'

Simuss and Clara both looked to the base of the pillar as it rose from the floor. There weren't any buttons or levers or anything that looked close to being used to control a spaceship.

'Where are all the controls?' Simuss asked.

'On there. On the white.'

'...But it's blank. Smooth.'

The Doctor walked over, into the centre of the huge room and started stroking the white, ceramic-looking console. As his hand traced across the shining material, lights of a soft, light blue started to appear under his fingers, squares and circles glowing, fading slowly as he moved. The blue lights echoed his hands, following his movements. He smiled.

'Look,' he said, wonder making his voice weak. 'It's beautiful.'

Simuss and Clara followed him out. Clara, enjoying the sparkling yet clear orb of a room that collected in the tall, spheric tower in front of them, moved to the Doctor's side, understanding that they had to release Gug from the heart of this TARDIS.

Simuss, however, stepped towards the door - it was a circular door that opened automatically as he approached, as you would expect inside an old sci-fi movie. It was soundless.

The three of them peered out as the door slid open, revealing the burning sun Gus as it loomed over where Gug should be, hanging in the black against the stars.

The Doctor started tapping the white console, it's invisible buttons glowing for a second as he touched them, then fading to white a second later. He was grinning like a child at Disneyland.

Clara and Simuss just stared at the sun, their eyes protected by the shields surrounding the TARDIS, feeling suddenly awfully small. And, oddly, cold.

'Any progress?' Clara called back.

'Not yet, getting there,' the Doctor said as he worked. 'This is fascinating. The creature, the thing in green, it's not physical so it doesn't need physical controls. It revamped its entire operating system for us. Wonder how that happened...' he looked at his own TARDIS, blue and beautiful, and it clicked suddenly. 'Oh you naughty girl.'

'What?' Clara asked, offended.

'Not you, silly. Her!' he nodded to the TARDIS while he kept on working.

'What did she do?' Clara asked, walking towards the blue box. 'Eh? What did you do, girl?'

'She was flirting,' the Doctor said, sounding to Clara like a disappointed, but not angry, dad. 'Flirting with another TARDIS!'

Clara stroked her. 'Do they do that?'

'Not sure. Well, apparently. I mean, she hasn't met another TARDIS in a while, must be nice to meet your kin after hundreds of years. But flirting?!' He looked to Clara, standing by her. 'I'm guessing you're on her side?'

'Of course,' Clara said. 'Girl's gotta flirt. Besides, dad, you should be happy.'

'Happy?' He thought. 'I suppose I am, actually. Nice one, girl. Getting back out there.'

'There you go, dad.'

'Do you have to call me that?'

'Guys,' Simuss called. They ignored him.

'Well, you're being all dad-y!' Clara laughed. Then she turned to Simuss, and saw him pointing.

'Guys?' Simuss called again, and now the Doctor turned his head.

'You know,' said the green figure as it hovered outside the TARDIS door, it's emerald glow intruding upon the white space, 'for a man who claims to be the 'Oncoming Storm', you are rather goofy, Doctor. Especially in this form.'

'Form?' he looked himself up and down. 'Have we met before?'

'Of course we have, don't you recognise me, Doctor?' the green figure watched him. 'Don't you see?'

'I see a floaty green thing with a TARDIS and fifty people on the surface of a moon that you've taken hostage with families that, I presume, you've also taken hostage.'

'Hostage?' it said, also sounding offended. Then it thought and said, 'I suppose, yes.'

The Doctor laughed. 'So, then, who are you. And please don't say we're going to do the guessing game. I've done that far too much. I'm old, you know.'

'Oh, I know, Doctor. I know exactly how old you are. from the first day I met you, all those years ago, back on Gallifrey, I've known exactly what you were.'

'So you are Time Lord.'

'Wasn't it obvious? I do have a TARDIS.'

'Stolen.'

'As is yours.'

'So. Who are you. The Master?'

'Too easy, don't be easy, Doctor. Though he does have a part to play, if everything goes right.'

'Oh. Great. A 'master-plan' guy. I love people like you.'

'Do you?'

'I do. You're all so full of yourselves. 'I'm going to take over the Universe', or 'kill the Doctor', or whatever evil plan you've got going.'

'Well then, I'm sure it'll take you no time to work it all out.'

'Seriously? A guessing-game?'

'I thought you were clever.'

'I am.'

'Then be clever. Exercise that big, old brain of yours.'

'Clever and lazy, that's me. Tell me what's going on.'

'Fine. I'm assuming you saw those readings coming from Gug?'

'I did.'

'Check them.'

'What about those people?'

'Find them and you can keep them.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'I'm not trying to hurt anyone, Doctor. Well, not yet. First, I just want to see if it's possible.'

'If what's possible?'

'To make a Time Lord out of a Human.'

What that the green figure seemed to evaporate into stardust, leaving Clara, Simuss and the Doctor, each with their own versions of a particularly shocked expression.

'What do you think the master-plan is?' Clara asked eventually.

'Mass-conversion, probably. The Master tried it, kind of. This one's taking a different route. A new breed of Time Lords.'


	6. Chapter 6: I'm Always Fine

The Doctor flew back to the console, hitting the side and rushing his fingers across the white surface until Clara heard a loud _clunk._

'There we are,' the Doctor smiled. 'Gug back home.'

Simuss, Clara and the Doctor all looked to where the green figure had been only a moment ago, and saw the burnt-orange surface of that little desert moon.

Clara was uneasy, however. Her eyes faltered, and she looked to Simuss. She thought he might feel the same. 'Doctor,' she said.

'Yup?' he called back, his voice void of emotion.

'So it's a Time Lord?' Simuss asked under his breath. Clara nodded.

'Are you okay?' she asked the Doctor, turning to him.

'Fine. I'm always fine.'

'You say that a lot,' she said. 'I've seen your life. I know when you say that, what you really mean.'

'And what do I mean?'

'You mean you're hurt.'

'The first Time Lord I've met in a while. In spectral form, yes, but true Time Lord. Not half-human, not a metacrisis. Just Time Lord. Look what happened to them. They're always murderers, killers, wanting to be supreme. That was the Master's problem, Rassilon's problem. My problem.'

'You?'

'It's inherent, I think. To the species. To be all 'high and mighty', to feel like we can just observe all of that pain and feel nothing. Well, I started feeling the pain, so I joined in. Fought in wars, killed people, watched them kill themselves. For me. I wanted power. I wanted to be powerful. The Time Lord Supreme.'

'This again?'

'What?'

'You always get yourself into this mindset, that you're a monster. You're not. We've been through this. Doctor. You are my hero.'

'You have bad taste.'

'I have excellent taste, thank you very much. And plus, beyond that. You're my friend.'

He looked up to her, tears in his eyes that she hadn't noticed before. 'They were all killers. In the end. They murdered and slaughtered and I was the last one standing. It's coming back, all of it. I don't block it out, but some days I manage to tell myself 'it was for the best'. Everything that has happened, it's all okay because I'm still fighting. But that's just it. I'm still a warrior. A fighter.'

'You're no monster.'

'I was those two people's worst fear, back on Earth II. How often do you meet people who are someone else's worst nightmare? And now there's another.'

'Doctor,' Simuss interrupted. 'I've just met you, and I can say now, you aren't like that one. Time Lords, humans, it's all the same. Some are good. Some are bad.'

'How do you classify 'bad'? Eh? Is a murderer good? Is someone who tries to justify everything they've done and fails everyday a good man?'

'A good man is one who fights his own for what's right. A man who will go to any length he can to save the families of a stranger who sees him as nothing but a threat.'

'This is a waste of time. We're arguing over my ego when there's a Time Lord out there experimenting on innocent Humans, trying to make them into Time Lords. The Chameleon Arch isn't exactly a forgiving piece of kit. It's going to be torture.'

'How do we find them?' Clara asked.

'It gave us a clue - the readings coming from Gug,' Simuss added. 'What are they?'

'Radiation, coming from the centre. It almost resembles a... what?'

'What is it?'

'It's another TARDIS. Two of them... there's two.'

'Disguised as a moon?'

'Stuck in another dimension. There isn't a way out, so the radiation shouldn't have made it out. Seeing as we can notice it now, I'm guessing that that's where the green guy went.'

'He has another TARDIS?'

'He could get there because he's pure energy at the minute...' He paused, thinking. Clara and Simuss didn't want to interrupt him. 'Pure energy. That's it.'

'What?'

'Simuss, when you were a Time Lord, what was it like?'

'Painful. I kept having memory-loss.'

'Your mind couldn't take it. A human isn't supposed to become Time Lord, it doesn't work that way. If the figure tries it on all of those people, I don't want to think about what might happen to them. What it might do.'

'So what now?' Simuss asked.

'We go down.' The Doctor turned and bolted into his own TARDIS, stroking the wood as he passed. He liked being back where he knew how everything worked. Clara and Simuss followed, taking one last look at Gug outside, floating in front of them, happily plodding along.

Clara took a moment to wonder what they were getting into. This had upset the Doctor, made him angry and sad and motivated. All because of a little rock somewhere in the cosmos. What's more, she wondered how all of this had gone on under his nose, for so long until he'd come along, saved everyone he could, and unleashed this new threat upon everyone. If this thing could create Time Lords, invincible creatures with changing faces and two hearts, she wondered what else it could make.

She bet the Doctor was too busy thinking to think. If that made sense. He did that, missed the obvious because he was so lost in the fascinating complexity of it all. In many ways, he was more human than he thought.

_Time Lords get things wrong, too_, she thought.

Eventually, Clara joined them in the TARDIS, their TARDIS, and gave the Doctor a punch on the shoulder. He seemed to appreciate it.

He gave her a smile and a poke to the forehead - she assumed this was some form of a show of endearment - and pulled a single lever, sending them into the TARDIS at the heart of that small moon.

As they cascaded down into the moon, however, Clara saw the Doctor's face. He was uneasy, now. His hands were tense and his brow had a sheen of sweat, glimmering slightly as he waited for the TARDIS to land. He had no idea what was outside of that door. She had an inkling that he didn't want to - not really.

'So,' she said, nudging him. 'You're okay?'

'Really,' he lied. 'I'm fine.'


	7. Chapter 7: An Unearthly Man

The TARDIS landed sharply, making a hollow _thud_ as it materialised inside another TARDIS. The Doctor, Simuss and Clara all looked at each other, waiting to see if they were all ready. They all moved at once. They were all lying.

Clara wasn't prepared to see what had happened to all those innocent people at the hands of the Doctor's brethren.

Simuss wasn't prepared to step back into the vicinity of the creature that had stolen his humanity, and was taking other people's too.

The Doctor, however, simply wasn't ready to see another Time Lord. Not like this. This wasn't right. He had a million questions and a mission which would most likely make sure none of them were answered.

They pushed through the doors, all three of them, stepping out into a console room that looked almost identical to the white one they had just left, only it was huge. And by huge, it wasn't, like, concert-hall huge. It was hollowed-out-moon big.

'Gug's a TARDIS,' the Doctor said. 'It had the small cave one attached to it, but Gug is just one huge TARDIS. It disguised itself as a moon, and people just forgot about it.'

'The first mention of Gug in recorded history is over a million years ago,' Simuss said. 'Does that mean that the green figure has been in there all this time? A million years, trapped inside a box.'

'Until we came along, yeah,' the Doctor nodded. 'Come on.'

He lead them towards the pillar, the unimaginably tall pillar of white glass and shimmering lights.

Clara found it hard to cope with the scale of it. The room was the size of a small planet - the false gravity resulting in them being at what was the bottom of a huge ball, on the inside. She wondered if the artificial gravity would keep them locked to the side no matter where they went, or if it would soon start to feel like walking up a hill, up the curve.

'So that's two TARDISes,' Clara said, wondering how important that was. From the Doctor's lack of a response, she summised it was probably important. This place had actually rendered him to not wanting to think about it. 'How many more?'

'Don't know,' the Doctor said.

'Where did they come from?' Simuss asked.

'Don't know,' the Doctor said again.

'How have we never seen them? Clara asked.

'Don't know anything, apparently,' the Doctor laughed.

'I do,' said Susan.

The Doctor span. It couldn't be. No.

Her hair was just the same as it had been, all that time ago. Back before the war, when they were just setting off. She was the reason she started, really. Got him off the planet. He took her to learn, to experience new worlds. New schools.

She was wearing the same things. She looked like a picture. A memory. That must be it.

'I am,' she said, her voice sending a painful shudder down his spine. 'Just a memory, I mean. I'm not- well, I'm dead. I'm sorry, Grandfather. For everything you've been through.'

'Susan?' He just looked at her. He couldn't stop.

'Grandfather?' Clara asked, but they both ignored her.

'Hello,' she smiled. They stood, silent for a moment in the hollow moon. 'It's mine,' she said eventually. 'The TARDIS. Took a leaf out of your book when the war started. I tried to run. Get out.'

'There wasn't a way out,' he said, his voice cracking. He coughed. 'Nothing got out.'

'The Daleks did,' she said. Her image flickered and it struck the Doctor like a slap to the face. 'The Emperor got out.'

'The Emperor died. I was there.'

'Not in the war.'

'No, but the Universe caught up with it. What about you?' He looked up to her. 'You're a projection. What happened?'

'I grew old. I didn't look like this when I died, but it's the best way to talk to you. When Rassilon tried to bring Gallifrey to the Earth, I was there. I warned Wilfred Mott, with a few others. We revolted against Rassilon in the final days. His time was passed.'

'How did you do it?'

'The hole Rassilon opened up by throwing through that gem was tiny, but it was a hole. The Master assisted us in creating a machine capable of holding it open long enough to catapult a TARDIS through. This was the first one we sent. Then another, which crashed into this one-'

'That'll be the cave,' the Doctor noted.

'-and then we lost contact with both. We sent through mine, but there was something that went wrong... My TARDIS wasn't protected like the others. It was older... I didn't... I'm sorry Grandfather.'

'You died trying to run away?' he asked.

She looked ashamed, but he was so very proud of her. 'You did what you should have. It was brave of you to leave a fight like that one. And you had a team of how many?'

'Seven. As far as I know, six of us got through.'

'You went last?'

'Of course. I had to make sure everyone else got through.'

'Alone?'

'Yes.'

'And you died because of it.'

'I was wrong, I know-'

'No, Susan. I can't believe I'm saying your name. You stopped Rassilon, took on the Master as a friend, fought to get out and sacrificed your safety to make sure everyone else got out before you did. I'm proud. So very, very proud of you.'

She flickered again.

'I'm just a projection, but you should know, Grandfather. This TARDIS, it's sitting on top of the hole in the Time Lock. You have to protect it. I don't know what happened to the other six, but something is here.'

'It's a Time Lord.'

'One of us?'

'I'm guessing so.'

'Who? What do they want?'

'You don't know?'

'This is just an echo of my last thoughts, Grandfather. I know nothing other than this place needs to be kept safe and that I love you. My Grandfather, the hero of Gallifrey.'

The Doctor started to cry and it broke Susan's heart, even as a projection, to not be able to hold him. Keep him safe.

Clara did it for her, keeping him upright as his body sagged.

Susan watched him, her eyes warm, until they snapped upwards. A green glow filled the room.

'You're here,' she whispered. 'It's you. What did you do?'

'Well, Susan,' the green figure laughed. 'I thought you would know me best. After all, you are my mother.'


	8. Chapter 8: Carl

'Mother?!' Clara had no idea how to react.

'Mother,' the Doctor said, amused. 'Hah. Good one. Now. Susan. Who is this?'

'My son,' she said. 'I was much older when I had him. Artificially. A warrior. Part of the movement. Our movement.'

'You started a movement!' The Doctor was surprised, but proud. 'And he was a warrior. What's his name?'

'Carl.'

'Carl?' Clara and the Doctor both asked, kind of disappointed at the name. Not that Carl is a bad name, it's just very... usual.

'No, of course not, dummies,' Susan said, allowing the Doctor to let out a breath. 'It's Carltesque. Carl for short.'

'So, Doctor,' Carl said, breaking the ignorance of him. 'You found my TARDIS.'

'Not hard, it is the size of a moon,' he sassed.

'It's not your TARDIS, Carl,' Susan reminded him.

'Yes, of course, you're right mother. It's not mine. I was on the one before you, where you crashed into the back of me, sending us both into Gug's ship.'

'Wait, Gug is a person?' Clara asked.

'We named the moon after her,' Carl said. 'Not me, I was trapped. The others did, after they'd changed themselves.'

'What do you mean changed themselves?' The Doctor asked.

'Into creatures of all shapes and sizes. You think the Chameleon Arch only works Time-Lord to Human?' Carl laughed, but it sounded strange in his twisted, spectral state. 'Human-to-Time-Lord is a little more difficult, yes, but it's not hard to put a Time-Lord into the body of, well, pretty much anything.'

'So there's you,' Clara said, counting them up. 'Gug, Susan. That's three out of seven. Where are the rest?'

'Good question, four for you Clara,' the Doctor said, smiling. 'Also, where are the people you took from the surface? They have families waiting for them, you know.'

'I said find them and keep them. I've had trouble with my experiments, but they've been good lab rats. Didn't scream too much.'

'Are any of them hurt?'

'Of course!'

'Are any dead?'

'No, none of them are dead. Great-Grandaddy.'

The Doctor stared at the green, floating remnants of the Time-Lord.

'Did I hit a nerve?' Carl asked, and he was almost about to say something even more snarky when he stopped.

The Doctor, having a brainwave, whipped out his screwdriver and scanned him, just as he evaporated into green smoke that dissipated into the hall, vanishing down some corridor.

'I'm sorry,' Susan choked.

The Doctor turned to her, smiling. 'No you're not. You're a computer-generated image, pull yourself together. Besides, I forgive you. Not your fault you had a psycho-child. Happens to the best of us.'

'Does it?'

'Apparently,' he said with a smirk. 'Besides, must be off. Got a plan. Not much of a plan, but it's a plan. I think. It's the idea that starts the plan. Is that good enough?'

Clara nodded.

Simuss did the same, reluctantly.

The Doctor broke through the idea of Carltesque being family, focusing on catching him and stopping whatever plans he had, and set off down a corridor that seemed to flow out from the huge, spherical space the size of the moon. If it were constricted to usual space, these corridors would have sprung out onto the surface of Gug, but the 'bigger on the inside' thing made it so that they seemed to just keep going, into darkness. Swirling, glistening darkness.

He followed the trace he had, scanning the area for Carltesque's signature radiation field. He span around corners, twisting into spaces that went up and down, the gravity shifting so even as they dropped down a vertical hole, they stuck to the floor.

It was the oddest sensation.

Eventually they came to an opening, not as large as the console room, but equally as grand - there was a spiralling column in the centre that stretched from the floor, twisting up to the high ceiling, resembling to Clara an old Oak that had outlived it's surroundings, imposing on the space around it. Springing out from the Oak were up to a hundred snakes of soft light, sprouting out from the tree and attaching to the lost families of the former Time-Lords.

'How many?' Simuss asked, staring up, above the mass of people hooked up to the tree, to the green figure. Carl watched down at them, smiling. He too had a snake of glowing energy linking him to the tree, coming from the back of his ghostly head and joining the hundreds of others attached to the Oak.

'Two hundred and thirty seven,' Carl breathed, apparently enjoying the sensation of being hooked up to all of these people.

The Doctor moved towards the closest person there, waving his hand in front of her face. No response.

'They won't see you, or hear you, Doctor.'

'Hypnotised?'

'Distracted,' Carl said. 'By bliss. They want to be here. They've never felt anything like it. I doubt expect they ever will again.'

'What are you doing?' Clara asked. 'I thought you said they were in pain?'

'That was the od technology. I had to alter it, and this new technology activates a new part of the brain.'

'So you drug them, and then what?' Clara asked.

'I convert them,' he smiled. 'I only need one, really. But it might take all of them to find one who can hold it together.'

'Only one...' the Doctor whispered, before realising what Carl meant.

But before he had any time to think, any time to react, Carl gave one single laugh and the Oak began to glow.

The huge, twisting column lit up, bursting with the blue light, no longer soft, lighting the room entirely.

Clara had to avert her eyes, but the Doctor couldn't look away. Simuss kept his eyes on a certain person in the crowd, away from the blinding light coming from above.

'What's happening?!' Clara called over the sudden whipping wind that had brewed around Carl, coursing around the room.

'He's taking a host,' the Doctor said. 'Any one of them...' his eyes darted around the crowd, but they were all in the exact same pose. Still. Silent. 'It could be any one of them,' he whispered.


	9. Chapter 9: Sneaky and Mean

'Any of them?' Simuss asked. 'But there's two hundred.'

'I know,' the Doctor nodded, holding his mouth.

'So he did it again,' Simuss said, giving a humourless laugh. 'He bloody well did it again.'

'He did what?' Clara asked. 'We don't even know- oh. He's making you let him go again.'

The Doctor nodded. 'First, we need to get everyone out. There's two hundred and thirty six perfectly human people in there, and one who we still need to take care of even if they are possessed by a Time-Lord with PTSD.'

'PTSD?'

'Post-traumatic stress disorder. The war must have got to him, plus being stuck here for so long. That type of violence, and then all of that time to dwell in it. Alone, in a destroyed TARDIS, your body broken like that.'

'I was going to ask, how does a Time-Lord turn into a glowing green mass in a box?'

'Well, it was regeneration energy, but it had festered. Rotted a little inside that box. It's an echo of what a Time-Lord was. You hear that, Carl? Nothing more than an echo. Susan, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that you're like some kind of psycho-link with me, picking out a person from my past I like to talk to me and retailing details as though you were her?'

'I think I might be,' she said. 'Mixed with the real Susan's last thoughts and the TARDIS database... I can't...'

'Susan I need you to go back, into the record. What happened. Who put him in that box after he started to regenerate?'

'I'll try,' she said, and promptly flickered out of existence.

'Now then,' the Doctor said, whipping out his sonic screwdriver and lighting it up. He smiled and pushed a button. 'There's one thing Time-Lords aren't very good at doing, in my experience.'

'What that?' Simuss asked.

The Doctor slid the sonic further and the TARDIS, his own TARDIS, began to materialise around him. 'Act human.' The blue box encase him, and he quickly stepped back out the front door, smiling to them. 'First thing we need to do is get all of those people unplugged, the we'll take them up to the surface.'

'Oh that's brilliant!' Clara grinned. 'The people up there, they'll be able to tell which one's faking, right?'

'I should hope so. Now, get to it, we need to pull those beams out slowly,' he moved towards the closest person, the same woman as last time. Tenderly poking the snake, he tugged at a small bump maybe an inch down from where it connected to her head.

Pop.

It was off.

Clara and Simuss began working immediately, getting every person out as slowly and cautiously as possible, but a slick as they could.

While they were working, Susan reappeared next to the Doctor, her head low.

'I can show you,' she said. the Doctor nodded and felt her hands, much more real than a projection on his head, as she swept him away into the past.

The hovered, watching down upon the crystalline TARDIS console room that had now redesigned itself, and there stood a man who the Doctor assumed to be Carltesque. He was a tall man, with thin legs but strong arms. Slender but tough.

He hobbled, his leg hurt - possibly even broken. Leaning against the console, head resting against the huge central crystal, he let out a breath. 'I think this is it,' he said, breathing more heavily now. 'I'm regenerating.'

His eyes began to glow a deep emerald green, a green that quickly enveloped his body.

A man walked in, the box under his arm. 'Carlteqsue, you have to stop.'

'Stop?' Carl yelled, astonished. 'But this is it, brother! We can roam the Universe as it is, without destroying anything!'

'Carlteqsue, doing what you want to do would blow a hole in the side of the Universe. Here, that would unlock the Time War.'

'Everything would go back to normal. Do you know why it was hell, Master?'

'Why's that?'

'Because everything that happened was condensed. Trapped in a bubble. Break the bubble, I reckon the War stops. We can go about our business as usual.'

The green energy began to swarm now, getting more impressive, more heated. The Master took a deep breath and lifted the box, opening it wide and sucking in Carl's green regeneration energy, swirling and screaming until it was snapped shut, cutting the scene short.

All of a sudden, the Doctor was back in the room, like a bad hypnosis trick.

Susan moved her hands away and the Doctor nodded. 'Okay. The Master saved the day. Carl was planning on opening up the hole in the Time War that would, for whatever reason, save the Universe.'

'I'm not sure he was 'all there'.'

'Nor me. But this gives us a clue - if the Master was here all that time ago, then he must still be somewhere. He can give us a hand seeing as he seems to be all do-gooding now. However, before that, back to all of this. We can do this!'

It seemed that barely a minute had passed, as Simuss and Clara had managed to unhook barely fifty of the two hundred, so the Doctor joined in.

Eventually they had everyone unhooked, and it took the a minute to recover and to come back into clear thinking. One-by-one, the Doctor, Clara, Simuss and Susan's projected ghost ushered the two-hundred people into the Doctor's TARDIS.

Two hundred people hidden under the skin of a false moon, one of them possessed by a Time Lord intent on releasing the Time War, and a TARDIS disguised as said moon that also happens to be sitting on top of the very hole in reality Carltesque wanted to rip open.

This was an interesting one.

Once the Doctor had reunited the two hundred missing people with their bewildered kin back on Gug's surface, he waited to see if any of them would falter. He told them all about what had happened, that they would have to stay for a little while so he could scan them. Look for traces.

Nothing.

Carl was gone in amidst a sea of the innocent.

_Again._

He had a style, that was something to know. Take people hostage, use the Doctor's compassion against him, all of that. It worked. It was sneaky and mean, but it worked.

He had to let them go, of course. He had to let him go.

So he had a back-up.

'Susan,' he smiled as he stepped out of his own TARDIS and into the centre of the moon. 'You waited up.'

'Doctor,' she said, her head low. 'Grandfather. I know what I am. I know you have to-'

'Give you a job? Excellent. Then you know what you're doing and I don't have to brief you.'

'...What?'

'Well, you didn't think I was going to turn you off, did you?'

'I...'

'Well, in that case, you silly thing, you should know that I want you to take care of this place. Don't let him back in. Set up the security. Keep the Time War locked away, where it belongs.'

'I... okay.'

'Okay?'

'Okay. I can do that. I know I'm not-'

'You're not her, but you still have sentience.' He swiped his screwdriver across her and smiled. 'There we go.'

'What did you do?' his Granddaughter asked.

'I soniced you.'

'For what?'

'For you. Try this,' he said, stepping forward and stroking her arm. He could touch her. She grinned and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing tight. He'd missed that from her.

He'd missed her.

'You were showing signs of physicality earlier. I just pushed it. Made it so.'

'I've missed you, Granddad.'

He smiled that heart-wrenching smile he did, where it pulled at his lips but sagged in his eyes. 'I've missed you too.'


End file.
